Friday, August 05, 2016

I am in another computer without the password for wordpress, so I want to try this (blogspot) again hoping I can post from here.

 Today is August 5 and feast of Our Lady of the Snows - the first Marian basilica of the West in honor of the Council of Ephesus. Ephesus is the magisterial proclamation of metaphysical Christology in that Christ is duly affirmed to have a total and complete human nature. He is truly man as He was affirmed to be truly God in Nicea. This is the harbinger in 431 of Chalcedon in 451 that will solemnly pronounce Christ to be only one divine Person with two ontologically distinct natures, the divine and the human. What is exciting about this is the following christological council of Constantinople III that explains the relation of the two natures - which is really the explanation of the relation of uncreated to created [consider grace/nature, faith/reason, church/state...]  This is supremely important in that the two natures, which are ontologically distinct and not suppressed or diminished in any way by their assumption by the Person of Christ, are not in parallel but "one" (not united extrinsically) personally
   The key is this: the divine Person of the Logos (the Person of Christ, the only Son of the Father) assumes the human nature (which is complete) and is in no way diminished, damaged or suppressed, but rather enhanced precisely as human. And this because it exists with the esse of the Person of the Son. Hence, the created human will of Christ, is capable of bearing - in its humanity - the total gift of Self Which is the ontological, Trinitarian status of the Son of the Father. That is , the union of the divine and the human can be found only in the person in the act of self giving. I refer to Arwen to Aragorn.

   The fundamental insight for this is to realize that wills don't will. Only persons will. St. Thomas: "Actiones sunt suppositorum." "Will" is an abstraction of the acting person. We speak of a person willing. But we are talking about a person transcending self. So, in our case, the divine Person lives out His transcendence as obedience to the Father through the mediation of His created and assumed humanity. What's the basis for such lucubration? John 6, 38: "I have come down from heaven, not to do my [human will], but the will of Him who sent me."
 
We have here on this feast the dynamic Christology of the self-gift which is the prototype and meaning of Christological anthropology and the meaning of man, the acting person.